1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to industrial automation systems and, more particularly, to a method for configuring a communication device within an industrial automation system and distribution unit for a configuration server of the industrial communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Industrial automation systems are used to monitor, control and regulate technical processes, in particular in the field of production, process and building automation, and enable operation of control devices, sensors, machines and industrial installations, which is intended to be performed as autonomously as possible and independently of human interventions. On account of continuously increasing importance of information technology for automation systems which comprise numerous networked control and computer units, methods for reliably providing functions that are distributed over an automation system and are intended to provide monitoring, control and regulation functions are becoming increasingly important.
Interruptions in communication connections between computer units of an industrial automation system or automation devices may result in undesirable or unnecessary repetition of a communication of a service request. This repetition causes additional utilization of communication connections of the industrial automation system, which may result in further system disturbances or faults. In addition, messages that have not been communicated or have not been fully communicated may prevent an industrial automation system from changing to or remaining in a safe operating state, for example. This may ultimately result in failure of an entire production installation and a costly production outage. A particular problem in industrial automation systems regularly results from message traffic having a comparatively large number of messages but relatively short messages, as a result of which the above problems are intensified.
U.S. 2005/0041671 A1 discloses a communication system having at least one first and one second router, where the second router requests at least one IPv6 address prefix from the first router. In this case, the first router comprises a storage unit for IPv6 address prefixes, of which at least one IPv6 address prefix is disclosed in response to the request from the second router. The second router comprises a unit for generating a further IPv6 address prefix based on the IPv6 address prefix disclosed by the first router. The further IPv6 address prefix is used by a communication device connected to the second router to generate an IPv6 address and is disclosed by the second router for this purpose.
DE 10 2011 088161 A1 discloses a method for operating an IPv6 communication network, where a respective communication device is assigned location information that is inserted into a communication network address assigned to that communication device. This can be implemented based on DHCPv6, for example. Using communication network addresses comprising location information, communication devices can be localized and locally driven with low complexity.